The jury in the civil battery and defamation case brought by E. Jean Carroll against Donald Trump is scheduled to retire to consider the verdict today.

Last Thursday, while on a golf trip to Ireland, Trump said that he would be cutting short his trip and returning to the US so as to ‘confront’ his rape accuser at his trial, even though he had not been on the original witness list.

Trump told reporters last week he would “probably attend” the trial.

“I’m going back to New York. I was falsely accused by this woman, I have no idea who she is – it’s ridiculous,” he claimed. “I’ll be going back early because a woman made a claim that is totally false, it’s fake,” he added.

Trump also called the case a “political attack” and claimed the judge was “extremely hostile” and “doesn’t like me very much.”

But shortly after that, his lawyer Joe Tacopina said in court that they were resting their case and usually that closes the door to any more witnesses. I think Trump made his statement as an act of bravado, never intending to carry it out, but designed to show his confidence and also so that when the judge refused to allow him to testify, he could once again claim that the judge was biased against him.

But US district judge Lewis Kaplan judge called his bluff and said that he would leave the window open until Sunday evening for Tacopina to file a request for Trump to appear. But of course Trump chickened out, no such request was made, and he did not testify.
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The last witness for E. Jean Carroll in her rape and assault case against Trump is a close friend of hers (Carol Martin) who testified that Carroll had told her about her experience at the hands of Trump just two days after the attack but that she had advised her not to go to the police because Trump would bury her with lawyers.

Donald Trump loves to sneer at and belittle people. It is the sign of a petty and insecure person and a bully, and in his case it could lead to his downfall. Although he has not appeared as a witness in the trial, the video recording of his deposition was played and it featured something that could hurt his case.

Trump seems to think that his sneering statement that Carroll “was not my type”, something that he has said at public meetings and in his deposition, would be a good defense against the assault charge. The catch is that when shown a photograph from long ago with Carroll and another man and woman and asked to identify them, he identified the woman facing the camera (Carroll) as his then-wife Marla Maples, even though it was the other woman who was Maples. So much for Carroll ‘not being his type’. he could have simply said that he had never met her. But no, he had to sneer that she was not his type. He just cannot help being a jerk.
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Yesterday Lisa Birnbach, one of E. Jean Carroll’s friends, gave testimony at the trial about how Carroll had called her immediately after the alleged rape by Donald Trump. She described how Carroll had been hyperventilating as she described what Trump had done to her. She said that she had urged Carroll to go to the police because what had happened to her was rape but Carroll refused and asked her not to tell anyone about it and she had honored that request all these years.

Another woman described how Trump assaulted her on a plane.

The court also heard dramatic testimony from a businesswoman, Jessica Leeds, who said Trump grabbed her breast and attempted to put his hand up her skirt on a flight in 1979.

Leeds is one of two women the judge has ruled can give evidence about the former president’s alleged sexual assaults. She told the jury she was seated next to Trump on a flight to New York. After chatting for a while and eating dinner, he suddenly “decided to kiss me and grope me”.

“He was trying to kiss me. He was trying to pull me towards him. He was grabbing my breasts. It was like he had 40m hands.

“It was when he started putting his hand up my skirt, that gave me a jolt of strength.”

Leeds said she was able to pull away and fled to the back of the plane. She went public with her account of the alleged attack weeks before the 2016 presidential election, after Trump denied having sexually assaulted women.

Leeds said she saw Trump three years later, when she was volunteering at a Humane Society event.

“He looked at me and he said, ‘I remember you, you’re that cunt from the airplane,’” Leeds said. “It was like a bucket of cold water thrown over my head.”

There seems to be no limit to the amount of evidence revealing what a disgusting creep Trump is.

The news reports do not mention any cross examination by Trump’s lawyers of these two witnesses but the trial is still ongoing so maybe that will come later. Trump’s lawyer Joe Tacopina seems to be the bulldog type and has not shown himself to be subtle and sensitive. The two women are now 79 and 81 years old and subjecting elderly women to brutal cross-examinations may not play well with a jury.

Interestingly, the Leeds story with all its graphic details was prominently reported in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post as well. I would have thought they would downplay or even ignore it. I wonder what that says, if anything, about the state of the Trump-Murdoch alliance.